


Making It Up As We Go Along

by cenotaphy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Mark of Cain, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon What Canon, Castiel in the Bunker, Characters having heart to hearts, Dean Winchester's A+ Self-Esteem, Dean is Bad at Feelings, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Fluff and Angst, Gadreel Possessing Sam Winchester, Gen, Good Person Gadreel (Supernatural), M/M, Men of Letters Bunker, Sam knows about Gadreel, Screw Destiny, Season/Series 09, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 04:34:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13263783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cenotaphy/pseuds/cenotaphy
Summary: While rummaging around the artifacts in the Men of Letters bunker, Dean finds a pair of what he thinks are Hellhound glasses...except it turns out they let the wearer see angel wings as well.





	Making It Up As We Go Along

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OutOfLuck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OutOfLuck/gifts).



> Canon-compliant up to the start of season 9.
> 
> Many sincere thanks to my lovely beta reader, [Eloise_Enchanted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloise_Enchanted)!

Dean's never said this to anyone, but secretly he thinks he looks pretty damn _great_ in glasses. So when he finds what looks like a spare pair of the hellhound-seeing glasses in a box of dusty Men of Letters paraphernalia that he's sorting through, he glances surreptitiously around the empty kitchen and slips them on. He cranes his neck a little, checking himself out in the nearest reflective surface, and makes a mental note to model these for Cas later.

"Dude, why are you wearing those?"

Dean swears and jumps about a foot in the air. Trust his sasquatch of a little brother to sneak up on him at the worst moment possible. He isn't sure whether to blame it on Sam's natural cat-footedness, or to chalk it up to angelic power. To be fair, he hasn't noticed any other superpowers manifesting in his brother; Sam is pretty much just regular Sam, albeit skinnier than ever, with deep hollows lingering under his eyes, the stubborn remnants of the Trials.

It's weird knowing that at any moment, even though it doesn't happen unless a hunt goes south, Sam's eyes could light up silvery-blue and he could manifest inhuman strength or pin someone to a wall without touching them. It's even weirder when Sam's gaze turns inward, his eyes staring blankly as nothing as he holds silent conversations in his own head, or when his posture and micro-expressions make the subtle but unmistakable shift that means Gadreel is now the one controlling his body.

Dean doesn't complain, though; he's too grateful not only for Gadreel's presence slowly repairing the subatomic damage that the Trials dealt to Sam, but also for the fact that Sam didn't lay him out flat after waking up and immediately realizing that he wasn't the only one inside his own head. One heated shouting match— _for fuck's sake, Dean, you let an angel possess me?—yeah, I fucking noticed, how could you think I wouldn't—and his name's not Ezekiel, by the way_ —and a strained car ride full of apologies later, and things were mostly back to normal.

 _Mostly_ being the operative word. Because now, as Dean turns around, he almost falls over in pure shock, and normal flies out the back of his head and into the rainy morning outside.

Sam has wings.

***

Sam has giant, carefully folded, _skeletal_ wings, and Dean holds onto the edge of the table for support and gapes at them. The wings are almost completely featherless, little more than structures of slender, charred bone. If there weren't a few scraps of blackened skin and feathers clinging to the tips, Dean might have mistaken them for weird, giant skeleton arms or something.

"What?" says Sam, staring at Dean. "What is it?"

Dean points. "Uh."

Sam frowns, turning to look over his shoulder at where Dean is pointing, then looking back at Dean with a shrug and an expression that makes it clear Sam can't see the wings.

Dean must be telegraphing to some extent, though, because the next instant Sam's expression goes the kind of focused neutral that means he's talking to Gadreel. Dean watches closely. He's at something of a disadvantage when it comes to gauging Sam's relationship with Gadreel, because most of Sam and Gadreel's conversations happen silently. Dean hadn't been privy to Sam's initial meeting with Gadreel, because as far as he can tell, it had all occurred entirely inside Sam's brain.

He still has no idea what the exchange might have been, what Gadreel might have said to Sam and vice versa. But at the climax of their tense car ride back from the hospital, when Dean couldn't take Sam's stony expression and simmering anger any longer, he'd thrown up his hands and snapped, "Okay, Sam, tell him to leave! I can turn this car around and you can kick the bucket back in the coma ward!"

Sam had gone quiet, a grade-A bitchface riding his features, and finally mumbled, low, "I don't want to."

"You're giving _me_ crap about it," Dean had said in disbelief, "but you won't kick him out yourself?"

"You shouldn't have tricked me," Sam had said stubbornly. "But he's...now he's here, anyway, and he wants to help me, and...and he's hurt, and he's got nowhere else to go, Dean." And that had been that.

Dean's learned a little more about Gadreel since then. In his more irritable moments he thinks that of _course_ Sammy would go and develop a soft spot for the angel who was Heaven's original fall guy. But in other moments he watches color return little by little to Sam's face, watches Sam pause absently in the middle of a task and crack a smile at nothing at all, listens to the way Sam's voice goes soft at the edges when he says Gadreel's name, and he's glad.

When Sam looks back at Dean, his posture has altered subtly, and when he speaks it's with Gadreel's characteristic cadence.

"The glasses you're wearing have lenses with...certain alchemical properties," says Gadreel.

"Yeah, they're for seeing _hellhounds_ ," says Dean.

"Not just hellhounds. They reveal much of what is unseen, including angel wings."

"Those are _your_ _wings_? What happened to them?"

Gadreel shifts back into Sam, who says quietly, "They were burned when you Fell, weren't they?"

Gadreel takes control again, while Dean watches, half-fascinated, half-unnerved. Sam and Gadreel have begun doing this more often: trading places fluidly, holding a normal three-way conversation with Dean or Cas or Kevin while switching control of Sam's body. It's faster than Sam simply relaying everything Gadreel has to say, but— _a whole lot weirder_ , Dean thinks to himself.

"Yes, it is why I can no longer fly." Gadreel holds out his hand. Wordlessly, Dean takes off the glasses and hands them to the angel. Without wearing them, he's no longer able to see the wings, and he's oddly relieved. They had been so terribly mutilated—it had stirred up a strange sense of anguish, made him feel half-guilty, as though he were looking at something he didn't have any right to see.

Gadreel slides the glasses on. "You can look at them too, Sam. I'm not ashamed of them." He rolls his shoulders slightly, turning to look over first one and then the other. Then he says, as if in reply to a question, "No, they don't look any different than another angel's would. Almost all of my kind lost their wings in a similar manner."

"Almost all?" says Dean.

"Yes." Behind the magical lenses, Gadreel's gaze is impassive. He takes off the glasses, passes them back to Dean. "There is one angel who was cast out of Heaven in human form. Whose wings were not present during his Fall, and so never burned."

As if on cue, that particular angel walks back into the room.

***

Dean and Cas haven't been, well, _Dean and Cas_ for very long. Dean can't say exactly when he realized how he felt about Cas; he just knows that for what feels like years, it's been thrumming inside his chest, bursting to get out, and when he saw Cas tied to that chair, perfectly still, blood soaking his bare chest—Dean had felt like _he_ was the one stabbed, like _he_ was bleeding out. And after Gadreel had healed Cas, the relief that rushed up inside Dean had been equally overwhelming—so overwhelming that he'd forgotten that his brother and Gadreel were _right there_ , and instead of backing off—instead of being sensible and stupid like he'd been doing for _years_ —he'd dropped to his knees and taken Cas's face into his hands and kissed him.

(Cas, it had turned out, even newly resurrected and tied to a chair, could kiss like a champion, and had done so with a vigor and enthusiasm that seemed to indicate he had also harbored certain similar feelings for years.)

And god, Dean doesn't regret it one bit. Because he'd gotten to be the one to take Cas back to the Bunker and feed him and dig up some clothes for him, and he'd gotten to be the one to teach Cas how to shave and tie his shoelaces and make his own coffee in the mornings. He'd gotten to do certain unspeakable, inevitably very loud things to Cas that Sam and Kevin gave him the stink-eye about in the mornings.

He'd been the one to pace a groove into the Bunker hallway, out of his mind with worry that one day when Cas didn't come back from a grocery run, and he'd been the one that Cas called, shaken and weary and newly graced-up, once he'd escaped the angel dicks who had been torturing him. He'd been the one to hold Cas in his arms at night when his angel broke down with the guilt of making the angels fall and stealing someone else's grace and— _screwing everything up, Dean, I'm always making mistakes, making things worse_ —he'd gotten to _take care_ of Cas, and hell, he intends to keep doing it for as long as Cas will have him.

But still, it hasn't been all that long, in the scheme of things, and Dean still cherishes moments like this one. Moments when he gets to smile at Cas's obscenely rumpled hair and the old t-shirt and sweats of Dean's that he's wearing, as the angel shuffles into the kitchen, yawning hugely and not uttering so much as a good morning to anyone.

"Morning, sunshine," says Dean.

"Morning, Cas," says Sam, Gadreel having evidently vacated the seat of control.

Cas fumbles with the coffeemaker and grunts something that barely, just barely, qualifies as a reply. Despite being graced up for a couple of weeks now, Cas has retained the same desire for coffee and absolute antipathy to mornings that he had as a human.

Remembering Gadreel's words, Dean grins suddenly and takes a step towards Cas, whose back is to the room as he softly curses the coffee filter in Enochian.

"Hey, Cas," he calls, slipping the glasses on, "check this out, these let me see your—"

The words die in his throat as he sees Cas's wings.

They're magnificent—massive and charcoal grey, curving out from Cas's shoulders. The damage, though not as horrific as with Gadreel's wings, is still obvious—almost all of the longest feathers are missing, while those that remain are mangled and twisted almost beyond recognition, and in a few places the flesh seems to have been eaten away, leaving exposed bone beneath. The feathers closest to the wing bones are intact, though, ink-dark and glossy. Despite the damage, Cas's wings are beautiful, in a way that echoes of loss and of things diminished, a way that sends twin bolts of anguish and longing twining through Dean.

He only sees them for a moment, and then Cas whirls, putting his back to the counter as his horrified eyes find Dean's face, resting on the glasses there.

"Dean, no!" Cas is shaking his head frantically, backing away from Dean, folding his wings tightly against his back. " _Don't_ —don't look at my wings, please—"

"Cas—what—" Dean pulls up short, holding up his hands. "Cas, what's wrong?"

"Don't look at them—they're not—they're—" His wings flare momentarily, as if in agitation, and Dean can't help it; his eyes track the movement automatically, riveted by the way the feathers closest to the top of the wing seem to shimmer as they move.

"Cas, what—" Sam starts to say, just as Dean reaches for the glasses, intending to pull them off. But it's too late. Cas's face twists in anguish, and he turns and bolts from the kitchen, his mutilated wings rattling agitatedly. Dean starts to run after him, but before he's reached the doorway he hears the front door open and slam and realizes that Cas has left the Bunker altogether.

***

"What the fuck was that about?" Dean demands to Sam, Gadreel, and the room at large.

Sam furrows his brow, then shrugs. "Gadreel doesn't know."

"Yeah, well, Gadreel probably didn't get the latest on Heaven's etiquette when he was sitting in prison," Dean says, and then sighs and runs his hand through his hair. "Sorry man."

Sam shifts; Gadreel says mildly, "It's alright. Though I don't understand the joke." He frowns. "Nor Castiel's behavior."

"Are wings really private or something?" Dean feels a stab of remorse; he shouldn't have looked at Cas's wings without asking first. _I'm an idiot_.

"Not necessarily, although we usually don't reveal them to other angels without reason. I have not seen Castiel's."

"They were gorgeous," says Dean, realizing too late that his voice has gone soft and reverent. "Missing a lot of the feathers, though. No wonder why he can't fly."

Gadreel nods. "Perhaps he simply was not ready to show them to you...wings are an intensely personal part of an angel, in that they can reveal all sorts of things about that angel, by virtue of their color, their pattern, whether they've been awakened..."

"What's awakened?" Sam asks, and as weird as it is to see Sam essentially prompt, ask, and answer his own question, Dean forgets all of that the next instant, because Gadreel shifts back into control and answers,

"Awakened wings are the wings of an angel who has met its soulmate."

"Wait, what? A _soulmate_?" Dean sputters. "As in, love at first sight, eternally bonded, share-a-heaven chick-flick shit?"

"I don't understand all the things you are referencing," says Gadreel politely. "But yes, a soulmate. A soulmate is the entity an angel is destined to be with. Often it's another angel, though not always. I knew an angel whose soulmate was a whale. They made wonderful music together."

"And when—when an angel meets their soulmate, their wings are...awakened?"

"That's the term we use," says Gadreel. "The name of a soulmate is written in Enochian, over and over again, on the angel's wings, but it only becomes visible once the angel has met their soulmate. I've only seen it a few times; it's quite beautiful. " He cocks his head, seeming to listen to something Sam is saying, but Dean has stopped paying attention.

He's remembering Cas's wings. The charcoal feathers, the way they'd shimmered even ragged and torn as they were, dark under the fluorescent kitchen lights.

Dark and blank.

Fuck.

Cas has a soulmate.

And it's not Dean.

***

Sam can hear Gadreel's voice inside his head if the angel wants to speak to him, and vice versa. But when they're alone, they both prefer going someplace else altogether and talking like normal people, albeit inside of a scene contained entirely within Sam's head. Gadreel can draw from either his memories or from Sam's; they've had conversations in fire-lit hunting lodges, at the mirror-bright edge of the Salar de Uyuni, under the arches of the law library at Stanford.

This time they're sitting on the edge of a cliff that towers high above a storm-grey sea. Rain falls in torrents from the dark sky and fifteen-foot waves smash against the stone cliff face and send up fans of spray, but Sam feels as warm and dry as if he's sitting in his own room back at the Bunker. Which, to be fair, he is. Dean had shut down towards the end of the conversation in the kitchen, and is currently pacing around the Bunker fretting over whether to call Cas; Sam, who's long since learned to let those two idiots figure their shit out on their own, is sitting on the edge of his bed, in the privacy of his room. Except he's also sitting _here_ , on this stone cliff's edge forty feet over the crashing ocean.

"I'm sorry about your wings," Sam says quietly.

Gadreel shrugs. He sometimes takes on Sam's form for these interactions; today, however, he is wearing the image of his last vessel, a broad-shouldered man with short hair and pale blue eyes. He sits next to Sam, his legs dangling over the edge, their shoulders brushing.

"They weren't much to speak of anyway," he says ruefully. "Even before the Fall. A few thousand years in Heaven's dungeons don't leave much of you intact."

Sam shivers, though not from the freezing rain that he can't feel. "I can't even imagine," he says honestly.

"Can't you?" Gadreel smiles a little sadly. "You endured over a hundred years of Hell. You were at Lucifer's mercy."

"Yeah, but I didn't have...y'know, wings. Dean and Cas got me out, and...good as new, right?"

Gadreel's gaze softens. "You don't have to hide your pain from me. And you don't need to pity me for the loss of my wings, for my Fall. It is fitting penance for my crimes. My only regret is that the rest of my kind, who were undeserving of the same punishment, received it anyway."

Sam clears his throat, looks out at the pewter-grey sea. He doesn't think that this is the time to point out that many angels had turned out to sort of be dicks anyway. "And...uh...the soulmate thing. You never...I mean, you never had..." He can feel himself blushing. Fortunately, when he side-eyes Gadreel he sees that the angel is again staring out at into the fog-shrouded distance.

"No, my wings never awakened. Not while it would have been visible, anyway. My primary feathers were actually ripped off quite early into my imprisonment...there was a guard, Thaddeus, he liked to be..." Gadreel pauses. "...cruel," he finishes, and a wave of memory rocks through their shared connection so strongly that Sam catches glimpses of it—silver-bright metal and smears of blood, chains as heavy as falling stars, _brother brother please brother_ —

Sam clutches at the sides of his head without realizing what he's doing. The tide of images chokes off and halts, and he feels Gadreel's apologetic grip on his wrist.

"I'm sorry," says the angel, looking contrite. "I didn't mean to let the memories spill over like that, into you."

"No, _I'm_ sorry," says Sam, blinking back tears. "Sorry you had to go through all of...all of that, Christ, no one should have to endure what you did."

Gadreel is silent for a beat.

"For a long time the only thing that kept me sane was the determination to make up for what I have done," he says. "I was obsessed with redeeming myself in some way. When I escaped and came to earth, I...I was ready to do anything, _anything at all_ , to obtain pardon, to regain my honor. To redeem myself in the eyes of Heaven, to be remembered as a hero and not a failure. And then..."

"And then?"

"And then I met you," says Gadreel, his face open and guileless as it always is. "I slipped into your mind that day in the hospital, and I could see everything that you had lost—I could see how the wrongs you'd committed ate away at you, and how even the penance you had already done couldn't, in your own mind, absolve you. And yet the ways in which you strove to right those wrongs were not self-absorbed, not arrogant at all. You were not trying to become a hero—you were sacrificing yourself, again and again, for the good of others. Effacing yourself, not seeking redemption but simply to do good."

"It wasn't that big of a deal," says Sam, flushing.

"It was," Gadreel insists. He looks away again, out over the sea. "And then you discerned my presence in your mind—something I hadn't thought possible—and you saw, at once, who _I_ was."

Sam remembers that—the stabbing pain in his temples, the awareness that something, _someone_ , lay battered and bruised in a distant corner of his head. The feeble shield thrown up by the name _Ezekiel_ , and how quickly it had crumbled before Sam's probing thoughts, revealing someone else—someone made of fire and cracked glass and remorse and desperate, thwarted love. The brittle remnants of wings, the questing touch of weakened grace, a true name long unused.

"You laid bare who I was," says Gadreel with something like awe. "And you wrested my name from me, you saw my shame, but when you called me by it there was...I am used to scorn and disgust and hatred, when angels speak my name, if they speak it at all, but _you_...you saw what I had done and you didn't hate me for it. You could have cast me out at that moment, yet you did not. Not because you wanted my help, but because you saw my hurt. And I realized then that there could be no greater honor for any angel under the sun than to heal Sam Winchester."

The gravity of Gadreel's declaration sinks into Sam, and he has to sit and breathe for a moment, overwhelmed. He realizes that he's blinking back tears.

"I'm sorry," says Gadreel after a moment. "I realize that you're uncomfortable with the idea that you might inspire others. You and Dean are similar in that regard, I've noticed."

Sam muffles a short laugh. "Yeah, positive acknowledgment is a little out of the ordinary for hunters, I guess." He smiles at Gadreel, but it fades as he thinks about seeing the wings, how Gadreel had turned his head to show Sam first the right one and then the left, as if determined to bare those ruined parts of him to Sam.

"They'll never grow back?" Sam asks softly.

Gadreel shrugs. "Perhaps; perhaps not. Who can say if the angels will ever be restored to what we once were?"

"Doesn't that bother you? Knowing that you'll never—know who you were—" Sam gestures aimlessly. "—meant to be with?"

"It might have, once." Gadreel turns the full crystalline force of his eyes on Sam. "Since meeting you I have come to place a lot less stock in there being some grand plan for all of us, and a lot more stock in the potency of free will. Of choice. I know what I feel now, and that is enough for me."

"But you might have a soulmate out there." The words are hard to get out. Sam is acutely aware of the way their shoulders are still bumping against each other, the way Gadreel's hand is resting against the cold rock mere inches from Sam's own.

"I know." Gadreel smiles, a real smile this time, without a trace of the sadness that so often plagues his expressions. "But for the first time in a long time, I am less concerned with what is out of my reach than with what I currently have."

***

Some time later, something clicks in Sam's head and he pulls back, catching his breath, letting his hands drop from the sides of Gadreel's face. Thunder rumbles far-off in the sky, but the storm is beginning to lessen, the rain becoming lighter.

"Wait...you said primary feathers? _Just_ the primary feathers?"

Gadreel blinks at him, biting down on his lower lip in a way that's extremely distracting. "Yes, the primaries. On an awakened wing, the name of the angel's soulmate is inscribed on the primary flight feathers. It's quite stunning, as I said. Is it...relevant at this point?"

"Shit," says Sam. "You didn't specify that."

"I really didn't think it was an important detail at the time—"

"Cas is probably missing all his primaries," says Sam, connecting the dots with growing resignation, "but he's still got _some_ feathers, which means Dean probably assumed his wings just weren't awakened, which would mean Cas hasn't met his soulmate, which you described as the person the angel is _destined to be with_ , which means Dean probably thinks...shit."

"Oh," says Gadreel. He nods musingly. "I see how that might have caused some confusion, yes."

"Goddammit," says Sam.

***

Dean paces the Bunker floor, fists clenched at his sides.

Cas has a soulmate.

Cas has a soulmate and it's _not him_.

He thinks of the fear in Cas's eyes when Dean had put the glasses on, how he'd tried to hide his wings, folding them tightly against his back. Cas hadn't wanted Dean to know.

Why? Why didn't Cas want Dean to know?

 _Because Cas doesn't want you_ , sneers a tiny voice in Dean's head. _Cas knows you're not the real deal, how could you ever be, you're just a lousy human, and Cas was gonna let you down easy, eventually, but now you know, now you_ know _you're not supposed to be with him_ —

He finally looks down at the phone he's been clutching and dials Cas's number, but it goes straight to voicemail—Cas's phone is turned off. _Dammit_. Dean tosses the phone down on the map table in disgust.

Maybe this is for the best, maybe Dean needs to let Cas go. Cas deserves better—

 _No_ , he thinks. Something defiant rises up inside of him and silences the sneering voice. No, if there's one thing he knows for certain, down in his bones, it's that he loves Cas. God help him, he loves Cas, Cas and his messy hair and his morning grumpiness and his smile and his warmth and his squinty-eyed confusion and his absolute brilliance in a fight. And—god help him—he knows that Cas loves him back. He _knows_ this.

"Screw soulmates," he mutters. If this is the way it's gonna be—if Dean only gets to be with Cas until the real deal shows up—then he'll take it anyway. He'll take Cas for every day, every hour, every _minute_ he can, and when Cas's soulmate shows up and Dean has to step aside, at least he'll do so with the privilege of having been loved by Cas for even a small portion of his life.

A door slams somewhere in the Bunker and Sam's voice sounds out, calling for him, but Dean is already taking the steps two at a time, wrenching open the front door and bolting into the pouring rain outside. He scans the empty road for a moment, ignoring how rapidly his clothes are becoming drenched, then goes with his gut and heads into the woods in the other direction.

***

After a quarter mile of slogging through the increasingly muddy ground, Castiel stops and sits down on a fallen tree. His face was wet before he even stepped into the rain, but now his entire body and all his clothes are soaked. He sits and lets the rain pelt his skin.

Like a malicious film recording, the image of Dean's face when he saw Castiel's wings keeps replaying in his head. The dismay and disgust there. The way Dean hadn't been able to keep from staring at the ruin of what Castiel once was.

Castiel knows what his wings look like. He knows how the grace he'd stolen is corroding them, eating away at feathers and muscle until he resembles the abomination he is. He hadn't known exactly what the effects of stealing Theo's grace would be, but he'd had an idea. He'd known the magnitude of the crime he was committing—the memory of Metatron's blade at his throat, of the sickening pain and terror of it, had still been fresh and raw inside his own head. And he'd done it anyway. Because he'd had to—to survive, to get back to Sam and Dean. To get back to Dean.

And now Dean knows. Dean knows exactly how little angel is left in Castiel, stolen grace or no. Dean has seen the way his wings are rotting, how first Metatron's spell and now Theo's grace have destroyed, _are_ destroying Castiel.

He shivers, trying to gather up the courage necessary to face Dean again. And then—what? Dean will want him to leave, he supposes. Or maybe not—Castiel can still be a useful ally, in the time remaining to him. But Dean will certainly not want to be near him, not now that he knows what his arms are encircling each time he embraces Castiel, now that he knows what brushes against him when he presses up against Castiel from behind.

He buries his face in his hands, muffling a sob.

"Cas?"

Castiel whirls, stumbling in his haste to get to his feet. He puts his hand on the rain-slick tree trunk to steady himself, and blinks up at Dean.

***

"Cas, I don't care," Dean blurts. The rain is cold and he is thoroughly drenched, so he decides not to beat around the bush. "I don't care if I'm not your soulmate, I don't care if I'm not—if I'm not the guy you're meant to be with forever. I love you. We're making it up as we go along, remember? I chose this, and I'm going to stick with you for as long as you'll have me—and you know what? You chose to be with me too, Cas. You knew I wasn't your soulmate, and you stuck around anyway. So. Yeah. I know you love me too, you dick."

Cas squints at Dean, and Dean has a horrible plummeting sensation in his stomach, because this is so _stupid_ —Cas is an _angel_ , and he has an actual honest-to-God soulmate out there, why would he want to be with Dean?—and Dean's just made a stupid chick-flick speech that probably sounds arrogant as fuck to Cas—

"What?" says Cas.

Dean blinks rainwater out of his eyes. "Uh. You know. Your wings, not having my name on them, or. Or whatever." God, it sounds fucking ridiculous to say aloud. "I'm just saying that—uh—if you want to break up because we're not soulmates, or whatever, that's okay, I understand, but if not—uh—I love you, and I don't give a fuck if your wings have my stupid name on them or whatever, they're fucking gorgeous, _you're_ fucking gorgeous, and—"

He shuffles awkwardly in place, aware that he's standing in a muddy puddle that's slowly seeping into his boots.

"You think my wings are gorgeous?" says Cas slowly.

"I mean— _yeah_ , dude, they're freaking incredible—I mean, I can see what the dicks upstairs did to them, too, and that's awful, I had no idea, you must be in so much pain, I can't believe you didn't say anything. But they're beautiful."

Cas is shaking his head. "No, Dean," he says brokenly, "no, you don't understand, _I_ did this to my wings, or some of it, anyway, _I_ stole Theo's grace, I'm—I'm an abomination, I have stolen grace in me, _that's_ what's destroying my wings—"

Dean moves without thinking, sloshing over the sodden ground and stepping over the stupid fallen tree to close the distance between them.

"Cas," he says. He touches the side of Cas's face. Cas is shivering, though it can't be that he's feeling the cold. With his other hand, he takes the pair of glasses out of his pocket. "Do you trust me?"

Cas still won't meet his eyes, but his mouth pulls into a miserable shape and he says, "You _know_ I do."

"Will you let me see your wings again?"

And now Cas does look at Dean, a frightened dart of his eyes before his lips firm. His shoulders droop; he nods, resigned. "Alright, Dean. But you—you don't need those."

"Why n—"

The words die in Dean's throat as Cas's wings simply _materialize_ out of thin air.

It's not like wearing the glasses at all, because this time Dean can _feel_ the presence of Cas's wings, feel the buffet of air as Cas raises them, feel raindrops splashing off the feathers and onto his arms. He's pretty sure his jaw is hanging open.

"Alright, Dean," Cas says again, his eyes downcast. "Look."

This close, Dean can see the ragged patches, festering sores where the flesh is being corroded away, and he can see many of Cas's remaining feathers are dull and ragged. A spike of anger goes through Dean; he forgets about how blank the wings are and what that means—he's furious at whoever would hurt Cas like this.

"Who did this to you?"

Cas looks surprised, as if he hadn't expected that to be Dean's response. "They were damaged when Metatron cut out my grace," he says. "I got them back when I stole Theo's grace, but—stolen grace, it's like acid. It's poisoning me."

 _Then take it out_ , Dean wants to say. _Take it out, be human again_. But he looks at Cas's wings, and he can't say it, because what right does he have to take Cas's wings again? Injured or not, the wings are indelibly part of Cas—Dean can't imagine what it must have been like for Cas to have lost them when Metatron took his grace. _We'll find another way_ , he thinks, willing it to be true.

"We'll find a way to make them better, Cas."

"No, I _deserve_ this," says Cas, miserably. "What I did—I deserve this—I—"

Dean grabs Castiel's arms, the soaked cotton t-shirt sleeves damp against his thumbs. " _Hey_ —hey, you did what you had to do, okay? You don't deserve this. It's going to be alright. We will figure it out. You and me and Sam. Uh, and Gadreel, I guess. And Kevin, if he ever comes out of his room."

Cas shivers again, his hands coming up to clutch at Dean's arms in return. "I thought you would be disgusted," he confesses. "I thought you were—that you'd think—"

"What, that I'd be grossed out or something? That's stupid." Dean dips his head to plant a kiss on Cas's forehead. What he'd really like to do is pull the angel towards him, hold Cas tightly against his chest, but the ground feels fairly slippery and they're both soaking wet, so Dean isn't sure if that's logistically the best move right now. "Can I touch them?" he says instead. "I mean—is it okay if I do?"

Cas shoots another quick look at him. "Dean, no, you don't want to—they're—they're poisoned, they're disgusting—"

"You know I don't think that, Cas."

There's a long moment during which Cas doesn't say anything, and then he gives a quick, jerky nod. His chin drops almost to his chest, his fingers tightening on Dean's arms, and his wings curve around towards Dean like the dark, graceful limbs of some feathered tree.

Dean holds his breath, reaching up slowly with one hand to lay it against the most uninjured spot he can find. Cas makes the tiniest hitching sound in the back of his throat, his eyes still determinedly fixed on the ground. The feathers feel silk-soft under Dean's palm, the rain running in cold rivulets down from the wing to drip onto his shoulder.

"Wow," Dean manages finally, knowing that undisguised reverence is showing through in his tone. "They're amazing, Cas."

Cas peers up at him, squinting again. His bangs are plastered to his forehead and his mouth has a confused quirk that makes Dean want to kiss it. "You're not...you don't hate them? You don't think I'm—" His forehead creases and he drops his eyes from Dean again.

Dean waits.

"Broken," Cas mutters at the ground.

 _Fuck it._ Dean moves his hands to the front of Cas's t-shirt and twists them into the fabric, swinging Cas around as the angel's wings flare out for balance. He shoves Cas against the nearest available non-fallen tree and kisses him, hard.

"You're not fucking broken," he says several long seconds later, when they've pulled apart for air. "You're fucking perfect. Theo fucking had it coming—fuck, I would have tracked him down and killed him myself for touching you, if you hadn't beat me to it."

"But my wings," says Cas in a small voice.

"Your wings are incredible," says Dean, and he means it. "We'll figure out some way to deal with the grace thing, but the most important thing in the meantime is that you fucking _survived_ , Cas, you survived and you came back to me, that's all I care about, you fucking idiot—"

Cas lunges for him, his lips meeting Dean's just as they both slip on the muddy ground and go crashing down to the forest floor. Dean grunts in pain as he lands on what seems like a tree root—he's gonna feel that tomorrow—but then gets distracted by the sensation of Cas's body on top of his and the very satisfying amount of kissing that's going on.

"I don't care about soulmates either," Cas pants when they finally break apart, "I never did—that's why I never said anything about it—I don't _care_ what's written on my wings—it didn't have anything to do with my choice—with how I feel—"

"Wait—so you _do_ have—but I didn't see anything."

"Soulmates' names are written on the primary feathers," Cas says. His wings curve down over them, rain sluicing off the feathers, splashing onto Cas's hair, Dean's face. "I lost all mine when Metatron took my grace, that's why you can't see a name. But my wings were awakened. I had a name written, over and over—"

"Oh," says Dean. "Shit." A stab of fear runs through him—Cas _does_ have a soulmate, he's _already met his soulmate_ —and for a moment he wants to ask who it is. But he shakes it off. _Screw soulmates_. Cas knows who his soulmate is and Cas doesn't care; he's chosen Dean; he's with Dean; he's _on top of_ Dean, soaked in rain and utterly beautiful.

"Was it my name?" Dean says cheekily, and then pulls Cas back down for another kiss, to show he doesn't need the answer. But Cas resists unexpectedly, bracing his palms against the ground on either side of Dean's head and staring down with those piercing, brilliantly blue eyes. Like he's looking at Dean's soul, _into_ it, memorizing its every detail.

"Of course it was your name," says Cas, fondness and exasperation swelling in his voice. "You fucking idiot."

And he kisses Dean long and hard as the rain pours down over them.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [here](http://image.boomsbeat.com/data/images/full/945/28-jpg.jpg), [here](https://www-cdn.law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/library-access-2-1200x630.jpg), and [here](https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/66/26/9e/aran-island-inishmore.jpg), are the places listed as locations Gadreel and Sam visited when they would converse in Sam's head :)


End file.
